After carrying out a daring theft of a valuable data cube from General Tesler's ship, Beck, as the Renegade, escaped on his light jet over the Sea of Simulation. Paige engaged the Renegade in an aerial dogfight and both his lightjet and her light copter crashed on a remote island of rocky spars. Paige waved for Pavel and the other jet pilots who had followed to pick her up, but Pavel, seeing a chance to be rid of her, turned back toward Argon, leaving her stranded with the Renegade. Unfortunately, the impacting vehicles had destabilized the island, which began, spire by spire, to derez into the sea. Upon discovering their danger, the two foes were forced to call a temporary truce and work together to find a way to survive. As their tenuous alliance continued, Paige reflected on her own personal history and the life she led before becoming a soldier of the Occupation.

In her former life, Paige had been a medic in another city, and helped two refugees named Quorra and Ada when they were attacked in the city's streets. Together with Rox and their friend, two other medics working at their newly opened medical center, Paige treated Ada's injuries, but her new friendship with Quorra was cut short when she discovered that the two were ISOs on the run from the Occupation. Quorra begged the appalled medic not to turn them in, and Paige reluctantly agreed, but when Recognizers began to converge on the medical center, Quorra knocked her out and the two ISOs fled. Paige woke to find the medical center destroyed, and a soldier who introduced himself as Tesler informed her that the ISOs had killed her coworkers before leaving and offered her a place in the ranks of the Occupation. Grieving and vengeful, Paige had asked only one question: how soon she could start.

Paige and the Renegade succeeded in building a rudimentary raft, but further destabilization in the ground beneath them threw Paige into the Sea. Beck, who had spent most of their time together attempting to convince her that he wasn't a bad guy, ran to get the raft, hoping to save her; but she assumed when he ran that he had abandoned her too. Before he could get to her, a light copter piloted by Tesler himself lowered a grapple to pull her out of the water, and he could do nothing but hide until they were gone and use the raft himself to get home.

Back on Tesler's ship, Paige returned the data cube that she had confiscated on the island and spoke bitterly about the Renegade, stating that she had made a mistake in trusting him but knew that Tesler would never betray her. Tesler agreed, pleased with the loyal soldier he had gained, and content never to tell her that he had ordered his own troops to kill her former colleagues before blaming it on the ISOs.

Though Paige retrieved the stolen data cube from Beck, he would later steal it from Tesler's ship once again, this time successfully.

Paige's demonstration of musical talent, scoffed at by her colleagues because she hadn't been written for that purpose, was praised by Quorra as a sign that she could surpass her programming and show creativity: "I'm sure you could learn anything you put your mind to."